I have lit myself on fire (I'm in a Darwin Awards book), been on stage with Penn & Teller, TV with Super Dave Osborne, scored at Maple Leaf Gardens, "sold" music to Kevin Smith, been in a commercial, and appeared homeless in a rap video. I'm a huge fan of golf, hockey, science, the Oxford comma, and equality. I currently write, create, and eat snacks.

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June 28, 2015

#LoveWins

You may have heard, the Supreme Court of the United States made a landmark decision on Friday. Just like that [snaps fingers] same-sex marriage became legal in all 50 states. Suffice it to say that America and a good part of the rest of the world went completely nuts (mostly in a good way).

#LoveWins was immediately trending on Twitter and if you use the hashtag they will throw in a little rainbow coloured heart just for kicks.

Rainbow themed profile pictures cropped up on Facebook and started multiplying like Gremlins after a nice long bath. I used the Facebook rainbow profile pic generator and at 7:05 pm on Friday, June 26, I changed my profile picture to this:

By 10:00 am the next morning I counted 57 of my 443 Facebook friends with a rainbow or otherwise equality themed profile picture.

By 2:15 pm the day following the decision I counted 80.

By 8:45 pm the number was up to 97 (my friends list was also down to 440 - more on that later).

When I woke up this morning the number was 108!

A good number of other people had also made comments about not changing their profile pic but in full support of it. I hope they never change them back. I love the look of my news feed now. Nothing goes better with pictures of cats than pictures of rainbows.

The White House was even lit like a rainbow that night - and it was absolutely gorgeous. Scores of corporations changed their avatars or sent out product-themed equality messages. This one is my favourites:

I like the above image for a couple of reasons. First, I think the way they used their products to create a rainbow was quite clever. "Look at how diverse our brands are!" Second, the message that "Labels are for Products. Not People." is bang on. Lastly, I like that P&G did this because they are a BIG company. They're not the biggest company to come out in support of equality, but they have more brands and products than I can name, and for them to show this kind of support with such an on-point message, in such a creative way, deserves a tip of the cap.

Now, in case it wasn't clear: this decision is a big deal. This is on par with Roe v. Wade and is one hell of an equality bombshell of a decision.

It's not all bubblegum and rainbows though and as expected, not everyone was on board. Just like the abortion debate, it will continue to rage. Just like equal rights for women, there is still much work to do. Just like systemic and institutionalized racism, hatred still runs rampant.

There is a list of companies that are against it and have been for a while. Some you may have heard of and some may surprise you (it's an 18-month-old list so apologies in advance if times have changed for any of these. From what I can tell, they haven't):

There are also scores of politicians, pundits, and prognosticators in the U.S. that have gone completely bat shit crazy (even one of the dissenting voters from SCOTUS flew off the handle). I can't imagine Vladimir Putin has any nice things to say about Barack Obama either (not that he ever does anyway). Even in Canada, where as of tomorrow (June 29) same-sex marriage will celebrate 10 years of being federally enshrined, our Prime Minister has been mysteriously silent. Nary a tweet of congratulations from the leader of a nation that prides itself on equality.

Let's not forget that in several states a person can still be discriminated against and lose their job for simply being gay. The Center for American Progress has a great infographic that outlines how far the U.S. still has to go on this issue.

But all is not lost. There are more than a hundred people among my Facebook friends alone that will support this fight, and there are literally millions more out there. Some of the biggest corporations in America are even on board and that's going to make a big difference. because in the good ole U-S-of-A money talks, baby!

So keep marching forward gays and allies. For the future; there is hope, and today; love wins.

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